Snowy Side of Hurricane Sandy

By Jim Andrews, AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist

October 29, 2012, 1:36:35 AM EDT

Potentially devastating Hurricane Sandy will even have a wintry aspect, that of heavy wet snow, to go along with its inundating surge, damaging winds and flooding rain.

Along the a stretch of the southern Appalachians, strong winds and clinging snow could down trees and power lines, triggering power outages.

Rain turning to snow Monday night and Tuesday could yield plowable snowfall from the Pennsylvania Laurel Highlands southward over West Virginia into western Virginia.

Higher ridges of West Virginia, above 3,000 feet of elevation, could see falls of 1 to 3 feet by Wednesday.

Travel may become difficult to impossible over these highlands.

Interstate highways I-64, I-68, I-77 and I-81 will be subject to wintry travel at higher elevation.

Elsewhere, cold rain may mix with or turn to snow at lower elevation of western West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and even parts of Ohio. Odds are that any accumulation of snow here would be slushy and confined mostly to grassy surfaces.